Human life is hampered by various structural problems which recur over millennia, giving plenty of chance for us to evolve and solve! Or possibly not?
- Marcher Lands, or the Mountains and the Plains
- Children
- Dictators
- The Surplus
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- Peoples of mountains will always fight peoples of plains (may extend to other economic situations) even though they can never win for long because the plains people have better alliances and can buy in help. There is more incentive for people on poor land to fight people on rich land than there is incentive for those on the rich land to utterly wipe out the mountain people. Even if they did have the determination and capability to commit that barbarity, the mountains – or, similarly, subsistence living – will always be there for those exiled/ shunned/ excluded from the richer lands/ better livelihoods. The result is persistent conflict. Marcher lands, however excellent in themselves, will not entice investment due to ongoing conflict, and so will be unlikely to industrialise or to be central politically. Solution: the people in the two seemingly opposing situations need to recognise their oneness, united by a situation, and act as such.
- The full-on nature of raising human children impedes carers from being self supporting. This currently means and has meant that the majority of women (and some men and others) are hampered in competing for resources and thus are poorer than men/ non carers and more dependent economically than vice versa. Unequal power relations bring out the worst in humans. This creates endemic unhappiness as a backdrop to children’s lives when they are forming beliefs about reality. Solution: the couple/ family/ community raising the child need to recognise their one-ness, united by a situation, and act as such.
- The urge to power, which is in all human beings, and the wisdom of negotiating with the powerful – sacrificing liberty to protect ourselves and those whom we love – creates dictators, who are generally non benign. Historians and journalists tend to treat each dictator as some kind of unusual and surprising genetic mutation; whereas they are pretty normal – look at toddlers. Solution: we need to see the existence of dictators as ‘our’ problem, as systemic, and create systemic safety barriers, such as rough equality of income, checks and balances in the constitution, built-in delays in making changes to government, education in politics, law, history….
- Human beings are able to generate a surplus of food and other resources, over and above what they need to use immediately. The surplus could in theory make our future better. In fact it enables: dictators, leisured classes, wars, slavery, destruction of the environment, addictions, commodification of personal relationships…. Solution? Recognise that we have collectively created the surplus, it is neither the reward for the rich nor the fault of the rich. Redistribution can mitigate some of the unwanted side-effects.
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